Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate;
Ok, Shakespeare, I'm gonna stop you right here.
For the life of me I can't understand why a woman would want to be compared toa summer's day. You are more lovely and more temperate? Well duh. I've never found 90 degrees and humid lovely, and certainly that doesn't fit the definition of temperate.
And I'm not just saying this because I am covered in a layer of flesh and fur and am always hot. Also, can you picture summer day's in the 16th century? I can't imagine mosquitoes and malaria and sweating in your pantaloons was hard to top with one's beauty back in Shakespeare's day.
Everyone remembers Vivaldi's take on spring, lovely and romantic, and winter is a dramatic close while autumn is playful and folksy. Do you remember summer in the Four Seasons?
Summer is the grumpy old man of the seasons. The violins are brusque, impatient, and forceful. It is the sound of a terribly humid day that turns into a flash flood.
Summer is kind of lose-lose: it's either too hot to go outside, so you stay in, or its raining too heavily, so you stay in. I don't know who Billy Shake impressed by calling them lovelier than a summer's day; yeah no shit, Shakespeare.
Now, autumn on the other hand, what a beautiful season that is.
The trees are a uniform green in summer. Autumn gives us browns, reds, oranges, and yellows. It's these colors that stand out that make nature for me.
If you want a sonnet that get's it right, here's "Pied Beauty": Glory be to God for dappled things -
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced - fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
Gerard Manley Hopkins is right, it's the dappled things that are beautiful in life: the fall colors, the freckles, the unexpected breaks from the monotony.
If I ever have a daughter, I am reading this too her as often as
possible; it's the 19th century version of "Beautiful"by Christina
Aguilera.
And if you keep up with my blog, you know there's a good chance my daughter will have freckles, because there's a good chance I'm gonna marry a woman who looks like Jean Grey...
Beautiful dappled autumn. I've done a fair amount of driving back to Ohio over the past two weekends. The first time I tried driving back, I got lost. Not a bad thing at all though, I got lost in beautiful Indiana fall foliage. Indiana is the garden of Eden in the fall- Brown county Indiana, the county next to Bloomington, has basically one town with 800 people in it. The town, Nashville Indiana, started as an artist's colony. And I can see why- the is the view from off the state route:
This is the best place in the world to be lost. I got a chance to stop and smell the roses, or rather look at the autumn leaves.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
No.
Too any and all the beautiful women reading this, I shall compare thee to something more beautiful by far; you are as exquisite, refreshing, and original as an autumn day in Southern Indiana.
And I just beat Shakespeare.
As you might have heard, Community was supposed to start season 4 today.
NBC has "delayed Community indefinitely". there are 13 episodes shot. We may or may not get to see them.
Now, if you are like most of the world you are saying "what's Community?". True, I've seen the ratings, and like only a million people in the world watch this show. However, that tiny group of fans are the most disproportionally vocal fans in the world; it seems the incredibly small viewership of Community is entirely composed of direhards. If anything were to happen to this show, NBC might want to amp up security.
Now feasibly, if you're reading a blog about Community, that probably applies to you.
But, in case you don't know community (or, like those of us you do, just like reading about it) I am going to explain Community to you. Everything that happened, at Greendale community college and behind the camera.
So, ok, why does everyone lose their shit over this show?
At first, Community initially was a sit com about a gang of misfits in community college who learn how to be a makeshift family. Initially, They spent about 3/4 of the first season developing characters and relationships in a community college environment. Then, Dan Harmon and the rest of the writers decided "Let's do whatever the fuck we want!".
Dan Harmon is important in this story. He's a crazy person but he's really good at TV.
Most of the rest of the show became homage episodes. You how Scrubs would do their Wizard of Oz episode or their 4 camera sit com episode, or when Psych did its Bollywood episode? Yeah, it's like that about once a season, and the whole show of the feel changes.
Except NO. They started doing this more frequently than "Community-style" episodes.
Here's a comprehensive (I hope, point it out if I missed any) list of all of the homage episodes in the last quarter of season 1 on:
Buddy Cop Movies
Mob Movies
Action/Apocalypse
Movies
Fraternity
Movies
Wedding Episodes
Astronaut Movies
Biblical Epics
Zombie Movies
Mean Girls
and/or Secret Garden/Lost (it’s a weird episode, with a trampoline)
A Clip Show, but
comprised of previously unseen clips
Spaghetti
Westerns
Star Wars
Film Noir (Chang Noir)
Something that
can only be described as “The Timelines Episode”
Ghost Stories
Behind the
Scenes Documentaries/Hearts of Darkness
Glee
Ken Burn’s “Civil
War”
Law and Order
The “It Was All
in Your Head!” Episode
8-Bit Video
Games
Heist Movies
And that's only counting the episodes that go full on homage, so it leaves out moments like "Random anime Sequence"or "Breakfast Club Dance" or "Abed becomes Don Draper/Batman/A background character" etc. More on him in a second
Secondly, series star Ken Jeong has called Community "the live action Simpsons. There is no small part on this show". Here is a(n even bigger list) of all the characters of the ever expanding, Springfield esque cast. Everyone is a character.
Jeff Winger
Britta Perry
Abed Nadir
Troy Barnes
Annie Edison
Shirley Bennett
Pierce Hawthorne
Senior Chang
Dean Craig
Pelton
Star-Burns
Leonard
Prof Duncan
Prof Slater
Prof Whitman
Prof
Garrity/Professorson
Vice Dean
Laybourne
Prof Bauer
Prof Kane
Garrett
Magnitude
Vicki
Fat Neil
Vaughn
Dr. Rich
Pavel
Quendra
Todd
Andre Bennett
Elijah, Jordan, & Ben Bennett
Gobi Nadir
Dean Spreck
Jerry thePlumber
Annie’s Boobs
(the monkey, but also her rack)
Murray the AC
guy
Officer
Cackowski
Sgt. Nunez
Nurse Jackie
Mike the Bully
Buddy
The Black Rider
Rabbi Chang
The Changlorious
Basterds
Alan Connor
Groundskeeper
Joshua
Levar Burton as
Himself
Luis Guzman as
Himself
French Stewart
as Vinnie the French Stewart Impersonator
Cornelius
Hawthorne
Prof Sheffield
Prof Cligoris
Prof Radison/ Mr
Rad
Subway
Carl and Ritchie
Gilbert Lawson
And of course,
Evil Abed.
I actually revised this list, trimmed the fat down to recurring characters/major guest stars.. This show has amassed more characters in three seasons than anyone ever.
This show messes with everything you know about TV. The major arc of the first season was a "will they or won't they?" plot involving Jeff and Britta. Finally, in the monumental Paintball episode, they do.
And then what happens, you ask?!
They become fuck buddies for a year.
Yeah, they did what no other TV couple ever did and finally resolved to not date, but still hook up. And you're not even mad about it.
Also, Abed is this show's secret weapon. In a world where every other episode is an homage, Abed is usually the facilitator.
Abed has Aspergers Syndrome and can't tell life from TV. The writers have not, are not, and will not ever be afraid to let him break the fourth wall.
Every episode ends with a tag that is, most of the time, better than the episode themselves
More importantly, this show has a cult following. And not just a cult following like "oh, a few people are really into Twin Peaks", no. There's a damn religion about this show, operated by the fans.
For example, take last year, when NBC moved Community to mideason replacement. The world got crazy; there was a spontaneous riot outside of NBC's offices chock full of the most obscure Community lines ever. They took an obscure line (Six seasons and a movie) and turned it into a rallying cry.
This wasn't just bring back Firefly, these Community fans are nuts. Here's another example: the video game in the 8-bit video game episode? The fans made it a real thing.
As Dan Harmon's swan song while anticipating cancellation, he wrote a beautiful last scene the wrapped up ever plot line, kept every plot line open, and told the fans he loved them.
So whats the deal with the show now?
So then the show got picked up to be run by Moses Port and David Guarascio.
They've been writers on TV for years, most recently Happy Endings (which you should like, it's silly). Showrunner wise, their only "success" was Aliens in America, which ran on the CW for one year.
I have success in quotes not because it's a bad show, but because it only lasted a year.
Let me be clear: this was a wonderful show that no one watched. It compared the plight of Muslims in America to the plight of nerds in High School. That is the greatest one sentence premise for a show ever.
Seemingly, the transition to Greendale community college would be easy.
And nothing ever is.
A week before the Season 4 was gonna start, NBC announced that Community would not be on on October 19th. Delayed indefinitely was the diagnosis; they said it would be back, just not immediately. Apparently, reruns of The Voice would get higher ratings anyway.
PRO: we won't have to deal with this Friday timeslot
CONS: WHAT DO YOU MEAN DELAYED INDEFINITELY?
You can't air a Halloween episode in February!
NBC hates us...
Also we are being deprived of a Hunger Games homage episode!
However, if we learned anything through this, it's that the cast of Community, Moses and David, and somehow, the characters, love us.
Community will be back. On TV, on DVD, even if they have to do the rest on Netflix after it's been cancelled for 6 years (dream come true, btw), we will see it. Showrunners and casts say that they love their fans all the time. This is the only time I've actually felt it. This is true love that Joel and the gang has for us. Wanna know how I know they love us? Because no other lead actor on a show does this:
a guy on twitter said he couldn't wait for new episodes of Community. and Joel replied.
SIX SEASONS AND A MOVIE, although I'd be fine with either 4 seasons, or 6 with the last two on TBS...
I've brought this point up in my blog before, and maybe it's been the theme of my life ages 18-22, but you've gotta love your hometown. I know too many people that hate where they came from. And yes, maybe when you we're 18 you went off to college and found someplace better. And maybe you've calculated it all out and you can't ever feasibly sustain yourself in your hometown as an adult, you'll have to live elsewhere. If that's true, that's cool. But I get angry whenever I see people dissing their hometowns. That place, no matter where it is, was the backdrop for your childhood. It was around for and probably helped in the formative process. Your town made you the warrior you are today! Embrace it!
That being said, I love Toledo, and hate people who hate Toledo.
Toledo Ohio. Yes, it has it's faults. Like any non-Chicago great lakes city, the industry is drying up. And downtown Toledo, compared to similar sized down towns, is lacking...on the surface.
The series of bars on Adams St. are as good as any for a pub crawl that I've been. The food gives you Tony Packos chili, Calvino's Meat Beasty, and kielbasa, kielbasa and kielbasa. You've got the Old West End, The Toledo Museum of Art, and the World Famous Toledo Mud Hens. No matter where I go in America, people of heard of the Toledo Mud Hens- the quintessential minor league baseball team.
thank you M*A*S*H*
And we've also got what time magazine once called the best Mosque in America, the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo.
Picturesque and symbolic of Islam in America, the glittering dome and minarets stands off the side of the highway in a cornfield. When I lived in Cincinnati, my road home to Toledo was a straight shot north on I-75 until I merged on the outer loop of 475. This mosque stands at the split of the highways; every time I'd come home, the mosque welcomed me. Every time I left, the mosque waved goodbye. It's as much a sign telling me to change lanes as it is a smile telling me we missed you. Sure, I've never been inside the mosque and I'm not a Muslim, but this building is an irreplaceable piece of my hometown.
It caught fire on Sunday afternoon. It was ruled an arson, and currently there's no concrete word on when it will be inhabitable.
If you attack that mosque, a Toledo landmark, you've got a problem with Toledo, and you have a problem with me. Here is the person of interest. I'm putting this on the blog because I don't want him getting away with this.
I have a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that when they catch the man who did it, he'll say he did it for Jesus. Now, it's either pathetic or brilliant thing that I'm about the cite the movie Dogma as a theological source, but i think at this time, we all need to see this:
If you love Jesus, you don't burn things down in his name. He's disappointed right now. I'm disappointed to boot. But no matter what, I love Toledo, I hope the arsonist is brought to justice, and I can't wait to come home and be greeted by a mosque.
